I am writing for Brandon today. His internet in Africa is really slow so he asked me, his mom, to post for him. Instead of me writing things for him, I will just post an email that he sent to me.

Hello everybody, this is Brandon.

I don't have much time right now and the internet here is slower than
dirt (which is an incorrect metaphor), so I'll try to make this as
concise as possible and hopefully give you an accurate reading of how
the trip is going.

So far Ethiopia has been amazing. We took a 10 hour drive through the
mountains to get to the village, Babele, which we're working in the
orphanage to build another room. Although the natives did most of the
work, I was still able to work up a good sweat. The best part was by
far the children, who are almost too cute for words. We got a lot of
video tape of me teaching them the parts of the body in English.so
precious. We played for hours and could've done it for longer. We've
been staying at hotels most of the time, although they're much more
primitive than hotels in America. The bathrooms are less than clean
and we hardly ever get hot water. I think it's a fair trade-off
though, considering they cost between 10 and 20 US dollars a night.

So far the food has been amazing. They have delicious bread and the
way they season their meat makes it succulent. I haven't had any bowel
problems, although some of our team members have, which makes me feel
fortunate. I haven't even had to use my personal roll of toilet paper.

We've seen quite a few animals, including hundreds of camels, goats,
and donkeys that always seem to be congregating in the middle of the
road. One of the highlights for me was a herd(?) of baboons that
gathered by the road. We threw them a couple of mangoes and it was a
lot of fun to watch them fight over the fruit. We were able to witness
a battle between a goat and a chicken in the village, when the goat got
too close to the mother hen's chicks. The goat was attached to a rope
and was finally able to escape when the rope broke. Another incredible
animal experience was feeding a pack of hyenas.with my mouth! You'll
have to see the video to believe it, but it was pretty incredible.

We got back to the orphanage in the city of Addis in time for a going
away party for Eric, a guy from Boston who's been in Ethiopia for 7
years. At the party they had some traditional Ethiopia dancers (who
were kids that Eric had spent time with). After the ceremony, our
other team members went to go get fitted for some suits, while we
stayed behind to interact with the kids. It took us a while to break
the ice, but then we asked one of the dancers to come over and show us
some moves. We followed as best we could, but I'm sure it looked
ridiculous. After a couple hours of dancing we sat down and tried to
learn all of their names. It took us a while to get the pronunciations
right, but by the end we were getting pretty good.

The next few days we'll be taking in a lot of the historical stuff
around. Internet access has been very limited, and like I said, it is
incredibly slow. I'm typing up this email in word and hoping to copy and
paste it into an email box, but right now it doesn't look promising
cause it's taking forever to load. It is very frustrating because I
can't even check the emails that people have sent to me, so thanks for
the thought, even if I don't get to read it.

So, even if you don't get this, I love you all, even if I don't miss
you that much. We're having an incredible time and we both feel the
work of God in our hearts as we interact with the poverty, disease, and
tragedy that so many of these kids have gone through. It would break
your heart to see some of it.

We've been taking hundreds of pictures and hours of video tape, so
we'll have plenty to share when we get home.